Twenty useful tips for households with a maid, cook, nanny or attendant, from people who have kept staff for decades

Short, practical, and learned the hard way. Each one is something a household on TheHire, or a worker, has said more than once. Save this; most of it costs nothing.

The first week

1. Write the sheet on day one. Every task in one line, the salary beside it, the hours, the off day, the bonus festival. Photograph it on both phones. A maid's three units run from ₹4,500 to ₹8,000; a cook from ₹6,000 for one meal to ₹9,500 for two. New task, new line, new amount.
2. File the police verification in the first week, not the first month. The form at the station or on the city police site, a photo, an ID copy, a previous employer's number. Keep the copy; the original goes straight back into her hand.
3. Register at the gate the same day. Photo, ID, the society app. A worker held at the gate for twenty minutes is late for every house after yours.
4. Pay for the trial days. Two or three at the day rate, ₹700 for a helper, ₹1,200 for a cook, whether or not you go ahead.
5. Show the house once, properly. Where the bathroom bucket lives and where the kitchen one does, which scrubber is for oily vessels, how the machine runs, where the gas valve is. Fifteen minutes on day one is a year of not explaining.

Money

6. Pay on the same date every month, by UPI if she has it, with a two-line note. Late salary is the number one reason staff leave without saying why.
7. The bonus is one month's salary, before the festival. Not a sweet box, not after. Diwali, Pongal, Onam, Puja or Eid, whichever is hers.
8. Raise about ten percent a year, before she asks. Being asked means the household is late.
9. One advance at a time. A week's or a month's pay against a real need, repaid in small fixed deductions on the sheet. Say no to the second until the first is cleared.
10. Never use the salary as a lever. Not for absence beyond the agreed deduction, not over a missing item, not over notice. Withholding wages is not a remedy and not lawful.
11. Full pay when you travel for a week or two, half as a retainer for longer. You are paying to have her back.
12. Supplies are yours. Phenyl, gloves, scrubbers, detergent. A worker buying her own is paying to clean your floor. A spin mop set is ₹600 to ₹1,500 and lasts a year.

Daily life

13. Separate buckets and brushes for the bathroom and the kitchen, and gloves for the toilet. Nobody should be cleaning a toilet bare-handed in your house.
14. Tell her about guests before they arrive. The sheet was written for four; a week of nine is a week of extra pay, agreed in advance.
15. A spare key with a neighbour or a smart lock. Part-time staff do four to six houses a day; a door nobody opens costs her the next three.
16. Tea and a meal for anyone working more than four hours, the same food the family eats. A live-in worker does not eat leftovers as a rule.
17. Say the small thing the day it happens. Two sentences on the day the floor was left wet beat a month of silence and an argument.
18. Lock what matters and stop worrying. A cupboard or a small safe for jewellery and documents, a notebook for grocery money. The honest worker, which is nearly every worker, is protected by it as much as you are.

The long run

19. Have the annual conversation. Raise, tasks that crept on, next year's festival dates, health cover. Ten minutes with the sheet, once a year, is why some households keep the same cook for a decade.
20. A basic health policy in her name costs a few thousand rupees a year and is the most appreciated extra a household can give. For attendants on ₹15,000 and up it is the norm among good employers.

Four for live-in arrangements

21. A room with a door and a lock, a fan, her own cupboard, a bathroom she can use. A mattress in the passage is not a live-in arrangement, and the rate of ₹16,000 and up assumes the room.
22. A weekly off out of the house, a full day, and an afternoon rest that is genuinely hers.
23. The trip home agreed a month ahead, fifteen to thirty days a year, with the bonus paid before she leaves.
24. Her phone is hers. A monthly recharge is a small kindness; reading it or holding it is neither.

Three for nannies and attendants

25. The routine on the fridge: feeds, naps, medicines with times, and the numbers to call for what. A nanny at ₹13,000 or an attendant at ₹18,000 works from that sheet, not from memory.
26. Know the line between an attendant and a nurse. Bathing, feeding, turning, vitals: attendant. Injections, drips, dressings: nurse, under the nursing category. Do not ask one to do the other.
27. School holidays change the nanny's hours. Say it in March. Term-time after-school becomes full days in May, at the full rate, or hourly babysitting at ₹150 with a four-hour minimum.

Related tips you might want next

A parent whose care has crossed the clinical line is the home nursing category's territory, and the two arrangements usually run side by side. A pet that needs walking and feeding while everyone is out is the pet care category, though most families add a line to the maid's sheet instead. And a cook for a function, or one with a specialised cuisine, is listed under cooks, where the party and event rates sit beside the monthly ones. The guides for those three pick up where these tips stop.